


Thursdays on the Most Comfortable Couch in the World

by Routcliffe



Series: Halvbakt: Short Fantasies [6]
Category: Ylvis
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Memory Weirdness, Post-Traumatic Stress, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-08 01:08:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11635800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Routcliffe/pseuds/Routcliffe
Summary: It is the beginning of June, 2017.  Vegard deals with the aftermath of his nightmarish winter by drinking.  The funny thing is how well it seems to work.





	Thursdays on the Most Comfortable Couch in the World

“One afternoon,” Brynjar had offered that first time, after Vegard had been coaxed shaking out of the men’s room stall where he’d been huddled. The pub had had _Cops_ on the TV, and then a man in one of the booths had raised his voice. Vegard had spilled Finn’s beer in his haste to get away. 

Bård followed him in, sending waves of calm, and Finn had gone in when he’d gotten the mess mopped up, leaving Brynjar there to assure the waitress that they hadn’t just ditched the place. They’d come out with Vegard between them fifteen minutes later, just sort of hovering protectively on either side of him, not touching him because every time they tried he’d flinch away. He’d settled back into his seat, eyes downcast, breath still hitching occasionally, and Brynjar had leaned over to him and said, gently, “I can fixing this, Vegard. One afternoon. Gives me but one afternoon of your time and permission to make the needful rearrangements to your psyche. It will not be a pleasantful afternoon, but it will leaving you healed.”

Vegard had met his eyes briefly. “No,” he’d said quietly through his fingers. “No offence, but... no. Thank you.”

Now it’s been three months since he returned home, magic restored. He works on songs and sketches for the new project. He rehearses for Pohoda. He does his magiotherapy exercises religiously. He attends the classes that Judge Sumpfot mandated for him as part of his sentence. He could have refused, when the court asked if he would still be interested: technically, when he let them rip out his magic, his sentence was considered served. Even if he had an ulterior motive when he agreed to the extraction, even if he got everything back, stronger than before, with the assurance that no one will ever again go through what he’s gone through, he’s done his time. But the thing about being stronger is, if he’s not careful he might hurt someone accidentally, and the kind of training he needs doesn’t come cheap. As long as the dálki are picking up the tab he might as well avail himself of it. That’s what he’s been telling Helene and everyone, and Helene and everyone kind of believe him, but they know there’s more to it. Vegard wants to make every effort to co-operate. He wants to be _seen_ to make every effort to co-operate. He knows now that doing the right thing is no guarantee, their laws are still largely unknown to him and the application of them weird and arbitrary and based on a history he doesn’t know and can’t learn fast enough, but if he is co-operating, maybe they won’t hurt him again.

He hates that he thinks like this. He hates that the practice of magic, something he loves, is tainted by fear. He hates how jumpy he’s gotten, the way a raised voice or a certain tone of voice--the angry affected boredom of someone who can _make_ him comply--will steal his breath and make the strength run from his limbs. He understands that this sort of thing happens, that he will take time to heal, that he has to be patient with himself. Helene understands this too, and so does Bård, and so do Finn and Brynjar, and so do Magnus and Calle now that they know a little of it, and they all remind him and each other regularly. But he is getting better, maybe even a little bit more quickly than he would have expected. And he doesn’t want Brynjar rummaging around in his thoughts. Brynjar is great for friend things, but the quick fix he’s offering seems like a god thing, and Vegard isn’t into gods.

So he does his breathing exercises, and talks himself down the way Finn taught him, and he does his best to balance getting back to normal with being kind to himself. And one of his ways of being kind to himself is dinner every Thursday with Finn and Melantha and now little Rhiannon.

Tonight it’s been cucumber salad, thinly sliced new potatoes from their garden (they dig the potatoes from underneath, leaving the plants and non-tuberous roots intact; Finn _insists_ ) fried in butter, and a thick slab of grilled salmon, meltingly rare. Everything is perfect. Everything is relaxed. Vegard sits at the big kitchen table where he and Bård were drawn back into the world of magic fifteen months ago, and feels, in this moment, perfectly content.

“Thanks for the food,” he says, setting his knife and fork side by side on his plate. “It was perfect. As usual. Melantha, does he feed you like this all the time?”

“Not on show nights,” Melantha laughs, and Finn lets out a surprised guffaw.

“On show nights, she’s lucky if it’s Grandiosa,” he says. “Do you have room for dessert?”

“Not at the moment,” he says truthfully. And then there’s a soft noise from the next room, and his hosts bound to their feet.

After Melantha feeds her, they let Vegard hold the baby. He coos and bounces and makes faces at her. At first he had difficulty getting used to Riri. Her right leg ends just above the knee, and her little ears come to blunted points. But she yawns and cries and cuddles like any of his three, and when she grabs his curls in her little fist and _yanks_ , his soundless howl is one of pure joy. This night she spits up on him. Melantha is apologetic, but shares his amusement. Finn is merely aghast. He runs into the bedroom and brings Vegard a cream-coloured linen shirt to change into. 

When the dishes are loaded into the dishwasher and dinner has settled a bit, there’s orange chocolate mousse. And then Melantha retires to put the wee one to bed and get some reading done, and Finn gets the fat little jug out of the liquor cabinet. 

This is the Mead of Truth. “Melantha can’t drink it with me,” he’d pleaded after that first dinner, months ago now, “and Brynjar says he would say things I don’t want to hear. You’re so honest that you have nothing to fear from it.” He’d said more, after, and it was important, but it was also poised right on the line past which things get curiously lost, and Vegard finds it more comfortable, most of the time, to not remember. Not necessary, mind you. Just more comfortable.

Nevertheless, it had sounded fun, and Vegard prides himself on his honesty anyway. Now it’s a Thursday ritual. He always gets absolutely plastered, remembering nothing afterward, and he knows this is terrible guest behaviour, but Finn tells him not to worry about it, and keeps asking him back, and those nights reverberate pleasantly throughout the rest of the week. 

“Just a little this week,” Vegard says this time, waving his hands. “I want to see if I can, like, _not_ get wasted.”

“You’re never wasted,” Finn assures him. With a grin, he takes out a couple of tiny sherry glasses, and pours the mead in, and hands one to Vegard. 

“Well,” Vegard says. Finn is making fun of him now, but it can’t hurt to just leave it at a sherry glass and go home sober. 

“There’s more when we want it,” Finn says. He takes a sip, rolls it around on his tongue a little, and smiles.

***

They retire to the living room, and sit down side by side on the couch, sinking into the soft leather. Vegard praises, as he always does, how very very comfortable it is. Finn has even fonder memories of this couch, but he’s not about to share them.

Vegard takes a small mouthful of mead, and narrows his eyes in apparent bliss. “Why do you keep feeding me such expensive booze?” he asks, grinning. “I’d be just as happy with something that wasn’t twelve thousand kroner a litre.”

Ordinarily this would be a difficult question for Finn, but the mead is working on him already, narrowing the range of answers he can give. “It makes you talk. And you seem to feel better afterward.”

Vegard’s face clouds as he sets his sherry glass on the side table. “What do I talk about?”

“ _I_ hardly remember. Stuff that’s happened to you during the week. Stuff that bothered you. We talk about it. You get it off your chest. It seems like it’s good for you.”

“Do I say anything really embarrassing?”

Finn thinks about it for a full minute, trying to mould the truth into a shape they would both find acceptable. “You tell the truth,” he says. finally. “I don’t think that’s anything to be embarrassed about. Let’s watch some TV.”

He lets Vegard pick the channel. Vegard flips through as always, but he settles on the same one every time. The host, Alastor Oriax, says in a soothing voice, “Some people say you have to use rock salt, but I find that ordinary table salt is juuuuuuust fine. There. And you make your circle, it doesn’t have to be a perfect circle, don’t get hung up on perfection... There. And we’re gonna put a happy little candle _here_ , and another one _here_... You just find north, you see, and everything else sorts itself out.”

Finn glances over. Memory, all of it, has crept back to him while they’ve been watching. He is simultaneously amazed at his audacity, and aware that he is _always_ amazed at his audacity at this exact moment. 

Vegard has an elbow against the armrest and he’s propping up his head with one hand. His eyelids are at half mast. Finn takes a deep breath. There’s never been a problem, but if there was going to be one, it would be now. “You ready?”

Vegard blinks a couple of times, as if in confusion. Then he nods slightly. “Mm-hm.”

Finn takes a notebook out of his pocket, opens it up, and glances at the first item in a list that’s a little shorter this week. “Bård said you had a bad moment on Monday.”

Vegard’s eyes don’t leave the screen, but something registers in them. He blinks again. “Yeah.”

“What happened?”

With a thoughtful frown, Vegard shakes himself awake and rearranges himself so that he is sitting with one leg tucked under him. He runs a finger along his lips for a few seconds before answering. “A group of lios alfar outside of the office. It was a little bit uncomfortable.”

Okay, that was easy. Finn makes a small noise of sympathy. “What did you think when you saw them?”

Vegard’s brow furrows. “That they were there for me. That they knew all the things I’d done, and they hated me, and they were going to... to...” He’s starting to breathe hard, and his hand wanders to his chest, rubbing vigorously. 

“You’re safe, Vegard. It’s okay. You’re safe here, and you call the shots. Is it okay if I put my hand on your back?” 

“Yeah.”

Finn reaches over and does. “Is it okay if I touch your mind?” 

“Yeah.” Vegard exhales suddenly as Finn weaves their minds together. 

He gives Vegard time to adjust. Vegard’s eyes, which flew open when he started to panic, slide half closed again. “Is it okay if I show you something?” Finn asks.

Vegard whispers, “Yeah.”

“Tell me what happened, Vegard,” Finn urges gently. “Tell me what the truth looks like now.”

***

Finn’s hand on his back seems to complete a circuit, and as Vegard’s mind lights up gold, the memory comes fully awake: he understands that this has happened many times before, that he has agreed to it, that he is free to withdraw his permission at any time, but that Finn is right there with him, that there is no pressure and no danger. When Finn asks for the truth, Vegard knows what he is supposed to do, and sure enough, when he goes back to the memory, there is more there than there was before. There is still him, and there is still them, but now their thoughts in that moment are as accessible to him as his own.

Vegard sits on the couch, his chin forward, his eyes closed, his hands massaging his jawline. Finn keeps a hand on his back, a touch that soothes and steadies and grounds. “They were a bunch of co-workers at Trylltek,” Vegard murmurs, “all having lunch together at the Italian place across the street. One of them recognized me. She talked about me later. They all agreed that it was terrible, what had happened to me. One man felt like it was dangerous to be near me. But if I met him he wouldn’t hurt me. He would just be really nervous. Nobody would hurt me.”

Finn gives him a few minutes with the memory before asking, “Are you okay?” 

“Not yet.”

“Take as much time as you want.” 

Vegard takes deep breaths. There is a word he can use if he needs it, agreed upon at the beginning, and if he speaks it Finn’s hand will leave his back and the television will go off and Vegard will have darkness and quiet and solitude until he declares himself ready to continue. But he doesn’t need it. He has only had to use it twice, right at the beginning. 

Finally, when he’s ready, Vegard opens his eyes. Finn is ready too, handing him his glass of mead. Vegard takes another sip gratefully, feels the sweetness on his tongue and ancient magic trickling down the back of his mind.

Finn glances away for a second. When he glances back, he says, “Helene says you froze in the store on Saturday. What happened there?”

“Her tone of voice,” Vegard says, comforting himself with the thought that he’s not going to remember how plaintive he sounds right now. “The saleswoman. Helene kept saying, She’s not talking to you, but her _voice_...” Unbidden, he goes back, examining the new information. “The kids were running around the racks, startling customers. _They_ didn’t care at all. If she knew what it did to me she would be horrified.”

“That’s good, that’s good,” Finn soothes. “Can I?”

“Yeah,” Vegard says, and then Finn does something, reinforcing those connections with little threads of gold, so that when Vegard remembers that tone of voice, the memory of the time it was a saleslady yelling at some kids is just as strong as the memory of the time it was a guard ordering him into his cell for the first time.

The hand stays on his back as Finn talks Vegard through another handful of incidents. Fewer, this week, and far less severe than when Vegard first cautiously agreed to this. “And your dreams?”

Vegard remembers, and laughs softly. “You and Ulla were absolutely right about letting her give my name to the university. I, I thought I’d made a mistake when they brought the class in the first time, because there I am strapped to the table with the doctor poised over me ready to cut out my tongue and my heart, and suddenly there were twenty-two mareritt crouching in my head and I wanted to scream even harder and couldn’t. But then they lined up and took turns drinking my terror while their professor droned on about the structure of trauma and what configurations you should and shouldn’t use and the rest took notes and asked questions, and the last one looked into my face and said, ‘Awesome terror, dude,’ and pinched the doctor until she disappeared, snuffed her out like a candle. I woke up laughing. I had a couple more nightmares after that, but they weren’t too bad, and I don’t remember anything except that they turned funny. I think I might be somebody’s internship.”

“Good to hear,” Finn says, with a little laugh. In past weeks, Vegard realizes, he would have had to take a drink just now, but now he doesn’t feel the need. This is good, isn’t it? “It’s a good idea to take a sip before the next part,” Finn says gently.

Vegard does, feeling a little defeated. The mead is very nice though, and it’s hard to feel bad about drinking it.

“What’s the worst memory, Vegard?”

Right. Of course. The first time they did this, the first time Finn asked, he didn’t want to answer at all, but of course he’d had to tell the truth. But it’s not the same memory anymore. “The, uh... The...” His brow furrows. “When they stand over me to take my, my magic out, and I can’t move.” He is starting to shake already, his hands fluttering, and he can’t get enough air...

“You’re safe,” Finn murmurs, gently pushing Vegard enough to rock him a little, to remind him of the steadying hand on his back. “Remember to breathe. You’re doing okay, Vegard, you’re doing really well.” He wouldn’t believe Finn, he does not feel safe or okay or really well at all, except that he knows Finn has to tell him the truth too. “Everything’s all snarled up. I’m just going to untangle it. Is that okay?”

“Please!”

This is the worst part every week, Finn touching the moment that sends him over the edge into terror. Vegard digs the heel of his left hand into his thigh, while his right hand rubs his chest. Finn’s hand on his back is like an anchor. “You’re safe, you’re safe, it’s okay....” And then it’s easing already, loosening, because Finn has a knack for knowing how to undo these things, and the knot is lubricated by the golden sweetness of the Mead of Truth. Finn stays in that memory, untying and untying, murmuring soothingly. Sometimes he has to pull or pinch or bend things in ways they’re not supposed to be bent, but he is always gentle and careful, and it never feels as bad as that first moment. 

Eventually Finn has it down to one catchy, ouchy, shocky bit that he holds up for Vegard to inspect with his mind’s eye. “Here’s where the memory is tied to panic,” Finn said. “Is it okay if I break the thread?”

Vegard explores it, as if exploring a cavity with his tongue. Finn does one of these every week. He always asks before breaking anything. The memory will stay intact, and the feelings that were part of it will stay intact, but they will no longer be so tightly bound together. The memory’s evocation will no longer send Vegard back into that terrible moment. “Yeah.”

The snapping is the second worst part. It hurts, of course it hurts. But Vegard has had far worse done to his mind. It is a small, sharp pain that makes him suck in breath, and then part of him that has been tense for months relaxes, falls back into place. 

There are more to go, of course, but getting this one done feels wonderful. He leans back against the couch with a sigh. The hand on his back moves, giving his shoulder a firm squeeze. Together, he and Finn quaff off the last of the Mead of Truth in their absurdly small sherry glasses. “Good stuff,” Vegard says, a trifle indistinctly.

When he’s sober, he works very hard at not putting it together. The mead helps, isolating everything that he and Finn say and do here behind a layer of gold, and for this reason, Finn has told him, it has been a home remedy in both courts for centuries. It also helps that he’s no stranger to having memories walled off just so, and the slippage that that creates is not unfamiliar or uncomfortable. His alternatives are therapy--and what _would_ he tell a therapist?--and taking Brynjar up on his offer. This is just three friends having dinner and two of those friends getting drunk together. Something bad has happened, and the pieces of his life don’t line up anymore. The best way to keep it from shaking him apart is to put the gap right here, where Finn is working on it with him and neither of them has to remember, and if he has to lie to himself a little, well, it’s a measure of how bad things have been that he’s okay with it. 

Now, right now, everything is fine. He sits on an exquisitely comfortable couch with Finn’s hand on his shoulder and Finn’s mind still interwoven with his own, and feels safe. He wonders if his cousin, with all of his nerves and his crummy self-esteem, knows how much he’s helping. And then he realizes he doesn’t have to wonder. He doesn’t even have to ask out loud. Finn’s thoughts are all right here. He can check.

But Finn chooses this moment to start pulling away, dissolving the connections. “Not yet,” Vegard begs sleepily, turning away from Finn’s secrets. “Stay.”

Finn chuckles softly, and the chuckle sends golden reverberations through Vegard’s thoughts. “Okay.”

***

He awakens feeling warm and loose and deliciously comfortable. No dreams last night. There never are after one of his benders. And it _was_ a bender. There’s no hangover, but his last memory is of the taste of chocolate mousse.

He looks at the clock, and fear coils in his stomach, because this is how many times now that he’s going to be late for work because of his drinking? 

: _Just relax,_ : Bård soothes. : _It’s okay. I said you’d be in late._ :

: _But I_ shouldn’t.:

: _You’re expecting me to get tough on you sooner or later? Fine. This is me being tough on you: Vegard Urheim Ylvisåker, you are going to sleep for another fifteen minutes, so that you don’t undo all of Finn’s good work._ :

: _Getting me blasted is good work?_ :

: _If you could see the inside of your head right now, compared to this time yesterday, you’d agree that it is._ :

Vegard isn’t sure, but he lets himself drift for another few minutes, and ends up falling back asleep for half an hour.

***

When he finally makes it into the kitchen, where the slant of midmorning sunlight through the windows makes him feel guilty all over again, Helene has breakfast ready for him. She’s gotten the kids to school, and he would feel much worse about this except that when he apologizes she reminds him with a musical laugh that this is Friday, silly, and he’s beginning to get the idea that they really are okay with this, that they have made arrangements and allowances because they see this not as an unforgivable breach of his duty as a worker and a father, but as something that he needs to do.

They will go through this next week, and the next, and the next, because while they don’t know exactly what Finn does on these visits, Vegard is a much happier, more relaxed guy after them; because Finn has counselled them that Vegard needs a full eight hours of natural sleep afterwards for what he’s doing to heal properly; and because the one time that Vegard (foggily determined not to let himself sleep in again) set an alarm for himself and got his bewildered kids to school and made it to work on time, he did so with the curiousest case of aphasia, speaking earnestly to his children and his colleagues in a unidentifiable language, every word of which made buttercups and bell-heather spring up around the office, until Brynjar called and spoke a word into the phone that made Vegard drop like a puppet with his strings cut. He slept the morning away, and Bård told everyone it was that thing that was going around, he’d had it last weekend and Maria had kicked him out into the backyard so the pansies wouldn’t crack the tile, and everyone had nodded and smiled because the boys have always been weird and no one was sure if Bård was kidding, and anyway the extra greenery was nice. Now, every week, when the cab drops Vegard off and Finn sees him safely inside, he coaxes Vegard to leave his phone on the kitchen table before helping him up the stairs and planting a cousinly goodnight kiss on the top of his head. Then he heads back downstairs and waits another ten minutes on top of that before going home. None of the elven accounts of this treatment warned him about this, but then, none of them had to factor in working life in a busy modern human city, or the little extras, the little weavings and adjustments and recreations, that Finn finds he can do.

Now, Vegard eats breakfast and kisses Helene goodbye, and walks down the tree-shaded lane, out to the main road to catch the bus. It is a beautiful sunny day at the beginning of June, and he breathes deep of the scents of ocean and greenery, and sings to himself a little, revelling in the music of traffic and the wind in the trees and the voice he thought he’d lost forever. Today will be a good day.

He doesn’t have to wait long for the bus. He hooks an arm around a pole, and pulls his phone out so that he can check his e-mail. Getting started will help him feel better about missing a couple of hours. 

The bus lets him off at Jernbanetorget, and as he crosses to get the number 11 tram, he clicks his phone off and puts it in his pocket. There is a lios alfr behind him. He got off the bus behind him and now he’s following him. Vegard swallows hard and forces down the ripple of panic that runs through him, and speeds up. The 11 is there. If he runs, he can catch it. The elf launches into a run behind him. 

Vegard tries to leap across the tracks just as a hand closes over his collar and jerks him back. 

In front of him, the number 18 rumbles past, blaring its horn.

“Frey’s foreskin, buddy!” the elf says, grabbing him by the shoulders and spinning him around, looking him up and down. He peers anxiously into Vegard’s face. “You gotta watch! Are you okay?”

“I-I think so. Thanks. I didn’t, I didn’t...”

“Breathe. You’re the colour of alabaster.” The elf puts an arm around his shoulders and walks him across the tracks, to the platform. “We’ll catch the next one. It’s not worth your life.”

“You take the 11 too?”

“Yeah.”

A name swims unbidden into his consciousness. “You’re at Trylltek?”

The elf grins. “Yeah! I’m in Acquisitions. You?”

“Um. Concorde. On Sagveien.” 

The elf’s jaw drops. “Bloody hell! You’re Vegard Ylvisåker, aren’t you?”

Vegard shrugs, and forces himself to breathe. “Yeah.”

“I’m Dariel. I’ve heard all about you.” He holds out his hand, and Vegard clasps it. “Gods, you’re shaking.” He releases Vegard’s hand and fishes around in a pocket on his portfolio. “Here.” He hands Vegard a hardblomst. “Get some sugar into you. And here’s the 11.”

“Thank you,” Vegard says wonderingly as they join the press of late morning commuters and tourists and kids on holiday. 

Dariel motions him into a seat, and Vegard sinks down because his legs are jelly. The elf tosses him a wave before the crowd pushes him to the back of the vehicle.

Vegard breathes. He nibbles at the hardblomst. It tastes different from the ones he’s used to. Different flowers, different seeds. It might even be different honey. A regional variation? It’s very good. He runs his fingers across his lips and along his jawline, and breathes in and out, and watches the city flash by, and realizes that that went well. All things considered. A lot better than it could have. 

_You’re safe, you’re doing okay, Vegard, you’re doing really well._

The voice is his own. He trusts it.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written with help from the Script Family of blogs, but any errors are mine. 
> 
> This is the last of the short stories I have in reserve. If you want more before the next big thing is done, though, I do take prompts. :)


End file.
